I have been working on seven (now six, I tossed one in the garbage, yes I really did) circus babies for what feels like forever.
Because they are so big (Big Sage and Big Joe’s) I decided to go air dry. I used Golden Fluid. I took my time and I kinda stared diggin it, no trips to the oven, no paint solvents, no ventilation required and acrylic dries fast.
I have been wanting to make the switch, with Genesis gone and my worry that all these chemicals are going to give me bad lungs or cancer I thought this would be a good time to get my feet wet in Acrylic.
I don’t know what happened but I hit a point where everything got gummy, shiny, and my layers were getting muddy, and I gave up. I threw them all in a big box and walked away from the mess.
Last week I decided to go over them with GHSP just to see if I could save them. The good news is that GHSP doesn’t care if you have an acrylic mess under the paint, it does just fine, five, six, seven layers. The bad new is that it took forever. Baking big babies is hard work.
I decided to just play, break rules, get messy, go bold, have fun.
I am terrified of clowns. (I know, right?)
I make circus babies but I make them in a way that doesn’t scare me. This times, with this batch, I got to an uncomfortable place, really pushed myself to see where the line is for me. I found it.
They are edgy to me. Maybe I am being overly dramatic.
I did a little top rooting yesterday and pulled out my big box of circus clothes (I keep those separate) I am going to do all kinds of silly things.
I wrote a post last week about people copying. This where someone who copies instead of creates misses out. The best part of making art is experimenting, taking chances, doing things you have never done before or doing them in a way you have not tried yet. There is all this risk (its internal) and you go through “This is shite, wait this is cool, what if I… or if I…ooh that’s awesome, no its shite, Oh I know I can…”
It’s a super cool process. You might end up with something that blows your mind or something that ends up in the trash but no matter what you learn something about yourself and about your medium that you didn’t know before.
Pull out your ugliest sculpt, one you put in the way back of your shelf. Pull out some paint and do the thing you are most afraid to do. It might be to tackle dark skin tones, that pinky red newborn skin, or paint hair, it might be to root a werewolf, or modify the sculpt…
Tell yourself, “no one will ever see this, just me, I would most likely never paint this sculpt anyway, I have nothing to lose”. Just go for it.
